To start with, I hate SPAM; I made the mistake once when working at a previous company of having my e-mail address at the bottom of some press releases and in a discussion group: bad move: (view google) This was farmed by the spammers in no time via various web pages and I started to get tons of spam all about viagra and casinos.... which was entertaining for a while then it became a nightmare... real spam is an issue that we need to solve, however;

I'm now involved in e-mail marketing and have spent a considerable amount of time looking at the whole concept of spam and blacklists and the real cost to our business.

We all know that e-mail marketing is one of the lowest cost methods available for marketing, but legitimate marketers now face a real problem with using e-mail to communicate to their customer base.... heres why;

Historically the issue of spam has been passed to the IT department, we needed a technical solution to the problem and well to be fair, in some ways IT has delivered it - but at what cost?

Each day can you imagine just how many legitimate business e-mails don't get to the intended receipient each day? Meeting confirmations that contained the words (for example)

"The meeting will take place at the bridge hotel in Scunthorpe."

This won't get through in some cases because there is a blocked word in there. (in the city name) or how about.

Dear Phil,

We've just had a batch of fantastic second hand laptops in; I can provide 50 for your company at a 50% reduction off the retail price. I know you wanted to be told if we got some in so I've e-mailed you now with this great special offer.

Let me know or click here to view some more details about them.

Ta
George.

Now this won't get through either because it has click here in there and also special offer and other words that will trigger a filter. The thing that makes wording an e-mail so hard is that each company will have installed Anti-Spam technology differently - so wording that makes it through one company's filter won't necessarily make it through another.

I just lost a legitimate business e-mail and this happens day after day after day all over the globe....

Coming back to my day job sending out e-mails: Historically we would send out postal items to our customer base letting them know the dates and venues of new courses and also we provide a service were by we let our customers know whats changed (ing) in the corporate governance field. This has a huge cost attached to it (paper, printing, post, resource) that obviously has to be covered in the price of our training seminars.

We asked our 20k customer base if they would like to receive these updates by e-mail and now we send them out that way - cutting operating costs along the way. BUT despite being given permission these e-mails don't reach about 50% of the customer base. Now this percentage fluctuates dependant on the wording and format of the e-mail but the fact remains a large percentage don't get through....

What is worse is that some sad IT admin is sitting somewhere in a companys IT dept. and sees 10 e-mails come from my company to their staff (probably caught by the filter because of the wording and reported to the IT admin) He then goes and (without e-mailing us first - or phoning) reports us to Spamhaus, google groups etc or another blacklisting facility... in some cases we get blacklisted which then means the rest of the broadcast doesn't get through..... but this wasn't spam.

So when is e-mail defined as SPAM? - it seems that everyone has their own take on this - especially IT admins.. .. In the case above; we asked permission, we provide a remove facility (which is fully honoured), we catch hard and soft bounces so don't keep sending to non existent addresses, we provide our phone number on the e-mail and our e-mail is about training courses or changes in the law....... So how is this SPAM? - it isn't.

Lets just weight this up for a moment, you are the MD of a business and you have just told your IT department to install Anti-Spam measures. What is the real cost of this decision to your organistation?

a) Cost of IT resource on the installation and specification of the project.
b) Cost of Anti-Spam technology/software - depending on the size of user base can be pretty high.
c) Ongoing IT resource costs - ie user: "I got sent an e-mail that I haven't received can you release it for me" (some companies do put e-mails into a spam queue)
d) Then the unknown costs to your business when e-mails don't get through.
(1) Missed business opportunities
(2) Frustrated customers who think you are just not responding to their e-mailed request.
(3) Missed training courses, or events etc as the confirmation e-mail didn't make it through.

I could go on...

The reality of combating spam for me is a mix of technology and user training. You need to understand why you are getting spammed in the first place. This is what I do.

Turn off all Anti Spam filters at the server.

Don't use tradition, standard addresses such as:
info@ sales@ webmaster@ etc..
Spammers will guess these and try to contact you via them.

Don't publish any e-mail addresses on your web site... use a contact us form, that way people never need to see an e-mail address; this is a best practise anyway as you can place the contact requests into a database (form a queue) so if the e-mail part doesn't arrive you still have the request.

If you do need to show an e-mail address get your web developer to make it as an image not text. That way a spammer can't harvest it.

Don't use your real e-mail address when you buy something or need to post comments etc on the web.. by this it's simple... I give my e-mail address to companies I trust and do business with each day. I have a second e-mail address - this still comes to the same place that I use when I'm not sure about the company or if it isn't business critical.

I use something like firstname.surname@ for my real address but then use initalsurname@ for when I order something or post on the web.

I then just add an outlook rule that says any e-mails coming in from initalsurname@ place in a different folder.

This has worked for me for long time now and means that legitimate business e-mails get through fine but spam gets chucked to oneside and I only need to look through it if I ordered something.

Users should be aware that you get spammed because your e-mail address is
a) easily guessable - like info@ etc
b) appears on a web site somewhere
c) appears in groups or on a mailing list
d) you gave it to a company you didn't know or trust (ie an online store).

If you want to see what the world knows about your company, try searching in google (and google groups) for @yourdomain.com

You'll be suprised.